Alex_V

Good one, Daniel. I always enjoy your perspective. You seriously ought to consider putting your ideas into a book form. Nobody explains how Apple wielded innovation and outsmarted the other tech giants better than you, the details of which, could easily fill a 700-page tome. I can’t believe what I’m reading in the comments. Oh well, there are more opinions out there than there are atoms in the universe!

Of course, the success of the original iMac gave Apple the cash to crawl out of the hole it was in, and push on with a portable music player. No doubt, you are aware of that too. In fact, I can imagine an alternative universe where Steve Jobs hadn’t returned to Apple, and Jonny Ive pitches the iMac to John Sculley instead:
Ive: “We’re working on a transparent blue home-computer prototype, and we’re going all-in on this new connector, the USB port.”
Sculley: “USB, I’ve never heard of it. Is anybody else using it? No? Might be a dead-end. There are boxes of serial connectors in the warehouse, let’s use up those first. And, put in a SCSI connector for printers, most of our suppliers use those. Also the bondi blue colour is nice, but focus groups tell us that biege is best for home interiors. Transparent plastic forces us to polish the inside of the plastic moulds, and the operations guys say that’s crazy expensive. Better dump the transparency idea. That mouse sucks, let’s use our existing mouse, it’s already beige, and it’s good enough, don’t you think? Oh, and let’s talk about the missing floppy disk…” 

dutchlord said:

Apple products are more of the same and do not appeal to customers. The upcoming PI Tesla phone will disrupt Apple’s dominance and forces Apple to innovate again.

Sure it will… 

Fingers crossed we get a professional Aperture-like photo app from all this. I use Adobe Lightroom, but its current iteration is so inferior in basic usability, to Apple Aperture (from 10 years ago), that it’s like a bunch of cavemen trying to reproduce a digital watch. Disclaimer: I just don’t like Adobe software.

rcomeau said:

Plenty of use cases (mobile cart for example) where the computer needs to be powered on/off routinely. Not the most common application, but to exclude large chunk of users because they want to focus on one use-case is not good design.

No one is being ‘excluded’ at all. If you must shut your computer down, mouse click on the Apple menu > Shut Down. To start up, press the button. 

I don’t believe that this was a decision to prioritise form over function. Placing the power button, either on the back, or on the front, would look perfectly fine, in keeping with the Apple minimalist aesthetic. It appears that Apple are deliberately encouraging behavioural change: “Leave it on.” And there may be good technical reasons to leave the machine on rather than turning it on and off every day.